IT’S not really surprising that a good number of advertisements have been coming out lately, extolling the qualities and character of those with aspirations for high office. After all, we’re only five months away from the period for the filing of certificates of candidacy and, well, the early bird gets the early worm, doesn’t it?
From a strictly legal—some would say technical—point of view, there really is nothing wrong with these advertisements. It’s a free country, after all, and any person with money to burn ought to be able to spend his hundreds of thousands on whatever vanity project he feels like taking on. That’s called free speech. Regardless of the obviousness of motives, as long as it isn’t hate speech and isn’t using up public funds, that freedom should be respected—even if it rankles.
Thankfully, there is a proposed legislation threatening to sweep away the technicalities by cutting through the legal fiction that makes premature campaigning neither premature, nor even an act of campaigning. But, as with all legislation, this will take a while. In the meantime, however, this is the reality we are stuck with: We know that these advertisements are premature campaigning—whether or not they contain the words “vote for me”—but there’s really nothing the Commission on Elections can do.
Fortunately, this isn’t to say that everyone is powerless in the face of these aberrations.
Premature campaigning can be considered economic activity. As long as potential candidates feel that they will profit from these acts, they will keep doing it. For as long as there have been elections in the Philippines, premature campaigning has always been good for candidates. The sooner the candidate gets his face and name out there, the more he becomes embedded in the public’s memory; and the greater his recall value, the higher his chances of winning. If a candidate feels—whether rightly or wrongly—that he has won by this route once, he is almost 100-percent certain to do it again the next time he runs for office.
Clearly, if the activity ceases to be profitable—if the candidate loses, despite his premature campaign—there is a better-than-average chance of the activity ceasing. This is where the voting public gets to flex its muscles. By rejecting candidates who shamelessly promote themselves well in advance of the official campaign period, the electorate can send the message that they won’t stand for this kind of wanton rule-breaking. Or, at least, that’s how it would work in theory.
In reality, however, the outrage needed to create this sort of backlash just doesn’t seem to be widespread enough. For the most part, the people who are most vocal about their disgust at premature-campaigning practices can be found on social media. And these people are not even necessarily all voters.
The vast majority of the electorate—the people who vote for premature campaigners and are primarily responsible for creating the belief that premature exposure works—are either not active online or are not moved by click-based movements and campaigns.
Lacking any solid scientific basis but relying on my personal experience talking to voters everywhere, I would say that the number of outraged people online is fewer than the people who support the candidates, who campaign prematurely—the faithful who will say that they are against such practices but accept them as a necessary part of a successful campaign. In other words, the people will still vote for their candidates, regardless of the rule-breaking.
Sadly, even these two blocs of voters combined are greatly outnumbered by the third bloc—the people who simply don’t care: the undecided, the unengaged, the apathetic. And that’s why the “don’t vote for premature campaigners” hasn’t actually worked as well as might be hoped.
Still, it is a tack we cannot give up on. We must keep on telling everyone who cares to listen that they should not condone these premature campaigning practices, in the hope that, one day, a critical mass will be reached and the strategy finally works.
On the upside, it seems that the freedom to run roughshod over campaigning rules might actually be contributing to that effort. As politicians grow ever more emboldened by the lack of dire consequences, their early offerings also become more flamboyant and more ubiquitous. Where we once only saw posters and streamers, we now see full-blown broadcast advertisements; where politicians once exerted at least some effort to have their premature campaigning fly under the radar, they now proudly wave their propaganda banners for all and sundry to see.
“Notice me! Notice me!”
With any sort of luck, things will get so ridiculous that even the indifferent might start taking notice and themselves become outraged. When that time comes, we can only hope that these politicians learn to regret their premature self-promoting ways.
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James Arthur B. Jimenez is director of the Commission on Elections Education and Information Department.